Skittering Fear
by wrong light
Summary: When the gang war against the ABB goes terribly wrong, Taylor snaps. really... Bakuda was right about fear all along. just a short one shot that wouldn't leave me alone.


I own nothing of this, its just a thought that wouldn't die so here i am... posting it as a one shot after years of not writing. im out of practice and i was never very good to start so please go easy on me.

(Skittering Fear)

I stood at the edge of the lot that now contained nothing but the smoking, shattered remains of what had once been row of warehouses. Now it was a warzone. A whole city block reduced to cinders and Rubble by the prolonged battle against Lung and his ABB.

Though I knew it must be sometime in midafternoon the sky was dark, it's natural blue choked out by the rising columns of billowing black and orange smoke… and by the boiling, churning walls of the living cyclone that swarmed around us by my will.

I stood at the edge of the inferno. Of an ambush gone horribly wrong, the alliance of villains and heroes that had gathered to put an end to ABB had broken against the iron wall of Lung, Oni-Lee and Bakuda. I still wasn't sure when it had all gone south but the first I'd learned of it was when the explosions had started.

People had died.

Bakuda had been laughing. I remember a feeling a spark of fear at fighting someone who thought so little of human life. A spark I had smothered, it wasn't useful, I knew the mad bombers predilection towards rule by fear…

Even now I could only remember a blur, I'd been fighting Oni-lee, I knew that but… after that? Somewhere after watching Grue… watching Brian vanish in a flash of fine red mist I'd snapped. I had Lost myself in my bugs. Pushing all my hesitation, morals, all the fear, the all-consuming terror of fighting for just a few more brief seconds of life, into my connection with the swarm it... I… no **WE** , had become strong!

I had stood on the edge of Madness… and I had fled before it in terror, but I did not flee alone. The acerbic, seething, sulfurous power of my Terror flowed in my wake. Surging in an unending tide through my link with the insects drowning their tiny minds and spreading even further like lightning screaming through copper wire, And the swarm had come pouring in.

People had died.

I remember laughing as I tore them apart. I felt a spark of horror at the thought that I might have enjoyed their screams. It was a spark I grabbed and fed on, fanning it into an inferno of clarity. It was too useful to go to waste.

I stood at the edge of the crater, staring down into that pit of molten glass and scorched earth at the bloody form slowly shrinking back to human size at the bottom when my consciousness slammed back into my main body. Was it really over? Did that actually work?

What was left of lung twitched and I felt another surge of lifesaving adrenaline sweep through me… odd, some distant part of me noted, the fear was different now, an old friend who I could always trust to watch my back. Even the paranoia that this new power would abandon me at any moment, that this clarity wouldn't last forever was a creeping reassurance that my fear was still with me….

I started laughing again. I couldn't stop if I'd wanted to, it just boiled out of me only to cut off abruptly as a sharp hiss grabbed my attention. The sound of pained breath sucked through clenched teeth drew me back to the hell-scape around me. Corpses and other smaller bits of the dead littered the area… but here and there I could see some survivors just starting to move.

Here Miss Militia stood supporting a heavily bleeding Armsmaster as the both looked on in shock. There Tattletale sat where shed landed, Staring at me in abject horror and cradling a bleeding arm.

No.

Not at me I realized, but at the glowing yellow ring that hovered in the air between me and the fallen dragon… I couldn't remember how long it had been with me but its presence felt right somehow, as if it was meant to be.

 **"Taylor Hebert of Earth-Bet, You have the ability to instill great Fear."**

I stood at the edge of something like destiny. Almost hypnotically I felt myself reach out and pluck the thing out of the air.

Somewhere high above the world, in the thin places where sky met the void of space, an angel with too many wings began to laugh silently.


End file.
